Cubing Bread for Stuffing

My stuffing recipe is pretty conventional.  I use wheat bread rather than cornbread.  I just use one pound of my basic sourdough.  There probably are easier ways to make bread cubes, but I just cut up a stack of three (or maybe four) slices.  There are usually about eight slices in one pound.

More than a few slices gets hard to handle, but three cuts well.  I slice them both directions; the stack usually holds together through most of the process although it can start to fall apart as more cuts are made.

Then the cubes themselves need to be baked at 350 for at least 20 minutes to dry it for stuffing.

Cutting up a pound of bread takes about 20 minutes, so the whole process lasts an hour or less.

This is one of the Thanksgiving Day chores--although it can be made at any time, I usually only do stuffing once per year.

Thoughts on Latex/Vinyl/Nitrile Gloves

I use these gloves for a variety of purposes--cleaning, kitchen work, painting, spraying insecticide or herbicide, and other uses.  I've had a variety of issues with them.  Sometimes they're hard to get on, particularly with sweaty hands, and they can tear easily.  I had very bad luck with some nitrile gloves I got at a big box store: many tore when I tried to put them on.  It was enough to make me rule out nitrile gloves for years.  I then went mostly with vinyl, because (although they aren't rated for medical use) they function well and don't have the too-tight issues that seem to be ubiquitous with latex gloves.

It may be that I was just using cheap gloves.  The ones I had problems with didn't have their thickness on the box, but they were probably pretty thin.  Nitrile is available in a wide variety of thicknesses: Uline sells them anywhere from 2 mil. to 12 mil.  Home Depot has 8 mil gloves as well as thinner ones.  In my limited experience, 6 mil. nitrile gloves are not at all prone to tearing.

Vinyl gloves are also sometimes susceptible to tearing, but in my (again) limited experience, anything 5 mil. or greater is strong enough for the uses to which I put them.

In the picture below, 5 mil. vinyl is on the left; 6 mil. nitrile is on the right.

Another factor to consider that impacts ease of putting them on is whether they're powdered inside.  I've found that powdered gloves help a lot when hands are sweaty.  Getting a glove on somewhat wet/tacky hands is almost impossible otherwise; if I have to attempt it, I usually dunk my hand in water to get it thoroughly wet rather than just moist.  That helps.  With powdered gloves, however, it's no problem.  Some don't like powder residue on their hands, so avoid powdered gloves. It's not a problem for me.

More detail on the uses to which I put them:

When painting, I sometimes use them to avoid issues with splatter or the otherwise inevitable paint-on-hands syndrome I seem to suffer from whenever I take a roller or brush in hand.

For cleaning, it's a best practice to use some sort of barrier when using cleaning solutions.  Reusable (e.g., Playtex) gloves are an option, but disposable ones work well, too.  It's also advisable when spraying herbicides or pesticides.

When cooking, cleanup after some tasks is much easier if gloves are used, such as greasing baking dishes with lard or tallow.

 So in summary, go thicker than the minimum and, if needed, look for powdered varieties.

Skipping the Pre-Baking: Another Low-Carb Black Walnut Pie

Last year I tried a black walnut pie with a swaged almond flour crust that I pre-baked.  The results were okay, insofar as way-overdone almond flour can be okay, but it was apparent that an improvement was possible.

This year I skipped the pre-baking.  Below is the crust after forming and after adding the filling

There was enough butter in the crust to hold it together, so pre-baking doesn't even seem to be helpful in any way.  Below is the final result.  It looked and tasted better than last year's effort.  It's not low-calorie at all, but should be extremely low in carbs.

More on Splitting Wood

...And more on sweetgum.

As I just described, I got an electric wood splitter to help improve my productivity when splitting.  For the most part, it has worked okay.  So far, I have mostly used it with a bunch of sweetgum I got from my landscaping friend.

Yesterday, I had a piece that the electric splitter choked on.  I moved it over to the manual 10-ton and that choked, too.  After a few tries, this is what the log looked like:

As you can see, the wedges on the two splitters didn't make much headway.  The wood seemed to have a spiral grain that resisted splitting.  I hauled out one of my mauls to see what I could do.

After a couple of tries, I split off a piece.  However, I also did something that I have been aware of is a risk when splitting manually.  It's a best practice to bring the maul straight down onto the wood being split, so that if it misses or glances off, it is less likely to impact body parts.  Swinging in an arc could be bad.

Below is my left boot.  When splitting off the piece, on one swing the maul went to the ground, hitting the boot on the way.  I use steel- or composite-toe boots when splitting to provide some protection, although injury would still be possible.  The visible cut is deeper than it looks; it was taken after I used some adhesive to close the wound. I don't think I would've hit a toe if the composite hadn't been there, but I can't rule it out.  Cleaving off a toe with the maul would not be good.

Splitting Wood

I'm not an expert at this--at all.  However, expert or not, I needed to start splitting some wood fast when I moved last year (at the end of November, into a house with no central heat). I had two pieces of equipment when I moved in: a manually-operated 10-ton splitter like this one, and an 8-pound maul.  I also had the rack of oak logs that had been cut the year before.  Splitting with the maul was a mixed bag.  Some pieces readily split, but others only gave up after an extended battle.  Eventually, I started pre-splitting the larger pieces with the 10-ton splitter, then finishing them with the maul.  The 10-ton seldom split the wood completely; its range of motion was limited.

That worked relatively well, although it was slow. I have since gotten a second maul, as well. When it comes to using the wood to generate heat, problem #2 was that the winter was very wet, with  heavy rain December-March.  The wood was fairly wet; I wasn't covering it very well initially.  Problem #3 is that the chimney, visible in this post, is pretty short.  It doesn't necessarily draft that well.

However, manual wood splitting was viable, if slow. I learned that if there were a lot of branches coming off the piece I was splitting, it disrupted the grain and splitting was harder.  Also, some types of wood split more easily.  I have a friend in the landscaping business who soon supplemented my wood supply with a lot of mixed pieces, but he warned that some was sweetgum, which has a reputation for not splitting well.

Some sweetgum pieces split easily, but others were fibrous and stringy, requiring a lot of effort to separate.

 

 

This spring, I had to have an oak tree taken down; it was dying and right next to the garage, and also within falling distance of the power lines and house.  The big parts (large branches and main trunk) were left by the loggers.  Some of those are as much as three feet in diameter; they'll have to be chainsawed (either cut with the grain or across) before splitting in any fashion.

So I have plenty of wood on the property at the moment, but was interested in speeding the splitting process up a bit.  One option was (and still is) to rent a towed gas-powered splitter; they are readily available from independents and places like Home Depot.  A quick check showed that a 24-hour rental was about $100. Another option is / was buying a splitter.  In addition to gas splitters, there are electric ones, as well, ranging from 4-10 tons.  Gas-powered ones are typically in the 20-30 ton range.  So electric ones have their limits and are relatively weak compared to those that are gasoline-fueled.  There are YouTube videos of people splitting very large logs with 5-ton electric units, but the specifications for electric splitters typically say up to 10"-12" depending on motor and hydraulic ram size.

Cost is a factor.  Gas-powered ones are generally $1300+, while electric ones are roughly $250-$850; most are in the $200-$400 range.  Ones like the manually-operated splitter mentioned above generally cost around $120-$150 but are frequently on sale for $100 or so.

I decided to give an electric one a try and settled on a 7-ton model.

 

So far, it seems to be working okay.  it's definitely slow compared to a gas model (my one experience with those came a long time ago with a friend whose father used one to split a mountain of cottonwood in an hour).  However, the wheelbarrow load shown below took about 10 minutes, which isn't bad.

There are some small-diameter sawed pine pieces at the top right; those came from a dead pine branch that fell into the driveway.  The rest is mostly sweetgum with some hickory.

So far I haven't used it on anything bigger than the 10" recommended, but it is handling that size well.  I do have some wood to split that is larger.  Shown below is more sweetgum. Even though the sweetgum mostly showed the same characteristics described above, the wedge forces enough of a split to make it easy to separate the pieces.

As long as it doesn't break, it'll be very helpful.  It's substantially better than my previous approach.

Bread Comparison

FWIW, here are two loaves:  on the left is one made with all white flour; the one on the right was made with a 50/50 blend of white and white whole wheat.  Both turned out extremely well (or as extremely well as things get with me).

Everything else is the same (except the amount of water used in making the dough). I generally use 3 3/4 cups of flour, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1/4 cup sourdough starter, and about 1 2/3 cups of water. Baking is 35 minutes at 475 followed by 15 minutes at 450 with the lid off.  I bake it in a Romertopf clay baker. It initially rises in a large mixing bowl with plastic wrap over the top.  I put it in a proofing basket with a liner for the final brief rise (I'm not a Breadtopia affiliate and get nothing from anyone buying things there; the links are for reference only).

The countertop rise is about 8-9 hours at ambient temperatures, though when it's cold in the house I either let it rise for a longer period of time (up to 12 or even more) or put it in the oven on the bread proof setting, which keeps the oven at 100 degrees.  After forming the loaf, it rises about another 25-30 minutes while the oven is heating to 475.

Another Bread Post

I seldom bake white bread.  While it has its pluses, overall I prefer some whole wheat flour.  Since I just baked a loaf of 100% whole wheat, however, I decided to go the other way and do a loaf of white.

Temps for the overnight rise were rather warm, probably about 82 or so, and rise it did: over about 8 hours, it bumped up against the plastic wrap covering the bowl.

This has happened before with all-white flour dough, and it has always been in the summer when it has done this--I have never seen anything this explosive with dough mix that includes any amount of whole wheat flour.

Ordinarily, a vigorous pre-baking rise seems to portend poor oven spring, and that may have actually happened in this case.  However, the volume of the dough mass that went into the baker was so large it didn't really matter.

What came out of the oven was pretty nice.

I haven't often (or maybe ever) used a ruler for scale, but this loaf has a bigger cross-section than anything I have ever baked with whole wheat (even with vital wheat gluten added).  That's just the way it usually goes.  For a semi-useful comparison, here's the 100% whole wheat loaf again from the last baking session:

Back to the white loaf:  the structure shows that the rise, while pretty dramatic in comparison, was well-controlled and uniform (unlike what I was getting last winter when I let the dough sit out overnight at 60 degrees then switched to the oven for a couple of hours at 100).

So it was a success.  Maybe it's easier to be successful with white flour, but I usually get at least decent results (if not serve-to-guests-good) with some blend of whole wheat, despite occasional spinouts.

Sediment, Continued

As I noted a while back, the water from my well has sediment.  A lot of sediment.  The filter I was using previously, a one-micron wound string unit, worked pretty well, but some clay got through.  My filters are mostly nominal one micron, not absolute: the difference is explained here, in a document by the University of Nebraska Extension Service.  Essentially, with a nominal filter, some particles larger than one micron will get through--the standard indicated in the publication is 85% of particles with the size of the filter rating.  That being said, clay particles can be smaller than one micron: the Nebraska piece indicates they they can be as small as 0.2 microns.

I do have an 0.5 micron absolute filter cartridge that I may try sometime.  For now, I'm getting good results with nominal 1.0 micron filters.

The water is pretty good, without readily visible sediment, as I noted before.  Dishes and white clothes look okay to me, although with time they may look sandblasted (in the case of the dishes) or red-tinted (for the clothes).

That being said, as with the toilet tank, evidence of what's getting through can be found.  The picture shows what happened when I wiped out the detergent dispensing tray from my washing machine.  Even though the water flow rate is pretty high, unmistakable evidence of clay can be found.  A reverse osmosis filter could remove even more, but that would require a much larger filtration setup--multi-stage--that might impact throughput too much...for negligible gain.

A Nice 100% Whole Wheat Loaf

...Nice for summer, that is: the house is cooling down a little, but was still about 80 overnight during the rise.  With the newly fine-ground wheat from the Mockmill, the loaf turned out decent (no vital wheat gluten).

The first rise was about 8 hours and the second one was about 25-30 minutes.  It's white whole wheat, so the flavor is pretty mild.  The first two slices were rather small, but that's typical of 100% loaves--and much better than the nasty disaster of a couple of months ago.

Murine Recidivism

Trigger warning: this post discusses ways to trap mice and contains homicide scene photos.

My current house is older than the previous one I was living in, and it has a crawlspace (the other one was on a slab).  I'm not exactly sure where all of the gaps are, but mice can get into the house with little apparent difficulty.  When I was remodeling the place it was largely empty, and I was surprised to see mouse sign in the house in the fall and winter.

The picture is overexposed and out of focus, but clearly shows a mouse running around in what would become the master bedroom.  In the background, along the wall, is a spring trap baited with peanut butter that was never of any interest...that was my first (and unsuccessful) attempt at eliminating them.

Also in the background you can see long boxes: those contained blinds.  I had to replace one that the mice got into before installation; it/they snipped a bunch of the cords for use in a nest.

I then upped my game.  Maybe the peanut butter was no good the first time (I assume mice wouldn't like old rancid peanut butter any more than humans would; maybe it wasn't fresh--I got some single-serving PB containers to haul up to the house before I was living there and didn't try it on my own to see how good it was).  I got some Mini T-Rex mousetraps  (the link takes you to Shawn Woods's YouTube channel; he knows more about mousetraps than I ever will).  I got a 12-pack from Do-It-Yourself Pest Control.  The traps have mostly proven effective.  I also have set a number of Victor Tin Cat live catch mousetraps (I like the ones with see-through lids, although some have alleged the mice can chew through the plastic and escape).  I have continued to use peanut butter for bait; it does eventually go bad but seems to be palatable for some time if fresh when deployed.  Mice also like it.

I have a number of each kind of trap set out, and can go months with no mice.  Then all of a sudden, I'll get a spate of captures in one of the live catch traps.  I can catch mice in T-Rex traps in quick succession, too, but the streaks are more of a problem with the live catch traps.  Last December, I had a mouse in the same trap every morning for about five days in a row.  You can see where this is going...

I would release the mice far from the house--in some cases over 100 yards away on the other side of the road in front of my house.  Mostly I have caught deer mice.  They are supposed to have a range of about 0.5 hectares, aka 1.25 acres; a circle 262 feet in diameter is all the farther they should travel.  I thought.  You can see where this is going...

The spate of December captures ended when I released a mouse on the last day and inadvertently killed it. It started running back toward the house and I blocked it with my foot; it ran around the block and I tried to block it again, coming down on top of it by mistake.  So that was the end of that mouse and the end of the break-ins.  I began to wonder if I had a recidivism problem.

The next time I caught a mouse in a live catch trap was not long ago.  I had put one in the attic (baited with pecans) and one morning heard insistent tapping sounds, which were the mouse pushing against the box trying to get out.  I released it on the other side of the road.  A few days later I caught one in a different live catch trap and before releasing it, marked it with a magenta paint marker.  I drew a line or two on its fur and the mark wasn't very apparent, so I marked it more heavily on its left haunch, then released it and chased it into the undergrowth on the other side of the road.

Three days later I found this by the water heater.

When I took it outside, I flipped it over and saw this:

Two observations: First, it was the mouse I had caught before and marked.  You can see red streaks on its fur.  Second, I obviously caused a big problem with the heavier marking.  The mouse pulled out its fur.  My bad.  At any rate, the return of the mouse was disheartening.

It's even worse than I thought.  A mere 100 yards in no way gets it done.  I didn't read the above-linked article carefully enough.  It notes that, "Individuals that biologists have marked and then displaced have returned to their nests, on traveling 3.2 km (2 mi) in two days."  Two miles?!

This means the options are kill traps only or relocation far from my house.  I'm not averse to the latter; I can easily dump the mice out 10 miles from home.

Another option is poison, which I'm not wild about using.  I'd have to combine it with the live-catch traps, because rodents that eat poison bait and then leave the bait station to die are hazardous to predators. Compared to all of this, the kill trap is quite humane.

More Bread Developments

Back in July I wrote about the worst loaf of bread I had ever baked.  It might not have been the very worst.  I have had some rye loaves turn out pretty badly, too.  But July's loaf was definitely a D- (at best).

I noted in July that "I might need to adjust the stones in my mill."  That was indeed the case.  My emmer grain is all gone for the moment, but ordinary white hard wheat was on the table for last week's bake.

I finally checked my Mockmill and found that it was indeed grinding coarse.  It had drifted to about setting 3 (1 is finest and should be calibrated to where the stones just barely touch when the mill is running empty).  I moved it back to 1 and was pretty pleased at the fineness of the grind.  It wasn't as powdery as some commercial whole wheat flours, but it was comparable to some (e.g., King Arthur red).  This was probably the finest whole wheat flour I have worked with in several months. 

It's still summer here, so the house was very warm.  In the overnight rise, the dough almost filled the bowl. That's usually not a good omen for the loftiness of the final loaf, so I was prepared to be disappointed.  I think I got the dough form a little misshapen when folding it over and getting it ready for the proofing basket.  During the second rise in the proofing basket, once the oven was warming, the loaf got a little more distorted. Normally there isn't much rise because I have cut the second time short to just the preheating time: about 25 minutes.  However, this time it did noticeably bulk up.

The final product was pretty good, if asymmetric.

As you can see, the rise is very decent and the crumb is okay (or at least as okay as it ever is with my efforts).  There will be substantial slice size variation, but I have long ago learned to be satisfied with asymmetry and sandwiches of all sizes.

I'll have to wait until the next baking session to see if this was just a serendipitous confluence of factors that can't be replicated or if it is something I can do going forward.

Update: the next baking session has come and gone, and the results were similar--a pretty good loaf.

This I can definitely work with.  The first rise was about 9 hours and the second, as normal, about 25 minutes.

"Bigger than a Bread Box..."

The title used to be a common way to describe the size of something.  My parents might have had a bread box at some point when I was growing up, but I didn't really know how big one actually was.  I visualized something about the size of a loaf of bread.

When I moved into the new house, I realized I might have a need for one.  When I bake a loaf of bread, I usually leave it out for about a day to harden the crust.  I realized that with the possibility of mice--I have caught them in the house before--I needed a better plan than letting it sit on the counter unprotected.  I have never had anything go after my loaves while they have been sitting out--here or at my other house--but finding a loaf with bite marks and rodent droppings on it would not be welcome.

So I hopped online and started looking.  I was surprised that they were somewhat large-ish, certainly bigger than a single loaf.  Shown above is the box I got with one of my standard two-pound loaves.

Somewhat visible on the lid are a bunch of ventilation holes.  A tiny bug could get through them, but nothing larger.  What I have found is that the box does a good job of keeping bread fresh--maybe a little too fresh.  When I stick a loaf in there, it softens the crust a bit.  I don't store bread in it long-term; I just put it there (sometimes) on the day I bake it. Then the loaf goes into the refrigerator; that's a solution that works for me and keeps bread usable longer than just a few days.

The box is also big enough to hold a bag of potato chips, bananas that aren't fully ripe, or other items that are vulnerable to predation (not necessarily all at once).

Garden Carts

I have a nice wheelbarrow.  I got it at Lowe's 20 years ago and it still serves me well.  For some tasks, like hauling dirt or other dense, heavy items, wheelbarrows are optimal (though for truly heavy loads, one with dual tires would probably be better than my model).

However, for other things they leave much to be desired, such as hauling brush.  I have a long driveway and keeping the privet, wisteria, and other plants hacked back during the growing season is a chore.   Recently, I did some trimming along the driveway.  I used a garden cart instead of the wheelbarrow--I got mine at Carts Vermont.  Its capacity is nominally only about double the wheelbarrow, but because of the box shape and the handle, it can hold far more plant cuttings.  I was able to pile brush high on the cart and balance it for the walk back up the driveway, towing the cart behind me.  I don't know if it was effective or not, but I cut some lower-stem pieces and stuck them into the stack vertically to try to hold it together.  One way or another, it worked, and nothing fell off on the walk.  Most of the cart is privet, although there was some wisteria and a few oak or pine saplings (very fortunately, there's no poison ivy in the area I was cutting).  Before loading, I trimmed everything to be about 4-6 feet long so that I could still get a decent grip on the handle.  Here's a side view:

When dumped into the truck bed, before stomping the load down, the one load from the cart looked like this:

I'm impressed with its hauling ability.

Volunteer Pines

In the south, pines are weeds.  There are some varieties that are nice, and all are useful for lumber or pulp, but for a homeowner with land, they're just a pain.  When I bought my house a few years ago, it was pretty clear of volunteer pines.  The house had been vacant for a while, and the upkeep was limited in some respects, but the approach to the house and the back yard were in relatively good shape.  A few years later a number of pines had grown up, and I cut a lot down with my clearing saw.

Fast foward two years, and the ones I didn't get last time have grown up (in some cases they were too small to cut with the saw (the stems just bent away from the saw blade)].  Then others have grown up as well, and some of the ones I cut two years ago coppiced (small shoots grew out from the trunk below where I cut, in turn growing taller themselves).

So I went to work.  One area was dense enough that I was able to make pretty short work of them with a pair of loppers.  The stems were so soft that I could cut even fairly large ones easily.

Based on size, these were probably up to about four years old.  Most were probably a couple of years old, which sounds about right given the last time I cleared the area.

A few were as large as 2" in diameter near the base, but most were  1.5" or less.  Probably a third of them were slender stems with plants that were 18" to 2' in height, just 1-2 years old.  And there were some sprouts, which I just pulled.

After about an hour of work, the area above looked like this:

Most of them are on the ground and stacked in the foreground of the photo. You can still see additional standing pines to the left and more up near the house.  After another hours' work, the lower ones are all gone and about half of the ones up near the house have been felled, as well.  They're all loaded on the truck now for a trip to a mulching place.

Before hauling them, I'll strap them down to hold them in place.  This is probably 300-400 trees.

After this, I have plenty of other pines.  There are some in an overgrown pasture that are now over 10 years old, so they're pretty large.  And I have others that are 5-10 years of age, plenty tall in their own right.  The older ones have some value as firewood, but the stems in the truck above are too small to make that worthwhile.  Stripping the side branches and cutting the stems to length wouldn't be worth the effort.

Still More on Thistles

Here's a case study on thistles gone rogue.  This is a picture of a field, not someone's yard:  But they haven't mowed during thistle blooming season for the last few years and now have a problem.   It's hard to see how this field will produce much but thistles in a few years.

At one time it was a field of purple blooms, but there's nothing attractive about this.

Update on my own thistles: I mowed them down as noted previously, and they haven't sent up any more vertical stems.  However, they haven't died, either.  I expect them to be back next year.

I'm fortunate that I don't have any thistle growing in inaccessible or far-flung areas.  I could use my scythe or weed eater to take care of them almost anywhere, but it's better not to have to worry about it.

Bread Fail-2

Previously, I've written about failed loaves of rye and wheat bread.  Last week I had probably the worst ever loaf come out of the oven.

It was pretty sad.  It's a 100% whole wheat loaf (actually, it's 100% Emmer).  Breadtopia has an Emmer sourdough recipe that looks like it turned out somewhat well, but it's also fairly compact and doesn't show much rise.  My bread looked like this when sliced:

This made for a week of disappointing sandiwches.  The flavor was pretty typical of 100% whole wheat bread, which could be a good or bad thing, depending on your preferences.  Aside from the all-whole-wheat factor, there were a couple of additional things that might have played a role:  1) I over-hydrated the dough.  I knew I should've restricted the water a little but didn't.  My Mockmill grinds grain somewhat more coarsely than some whole wheat flours I have seen, and the coarser grind doesn't absorb as much water. 2) My flour might have been unduly coarse.  I might need to adjust the stones in my mill.

A third possible contributing factor is the climate.  It's summer now, and my house is warm, which can lead to excessive pre-baking rising of the dough. If the dough rises aggressively before going in the oven, my experience is that further rising once it's baking is curtailed.  That can be addressed through a shorter counter-top rising period, but I usually let it rise overnight, so it's going to be sitting on the counter at least 7-8 hours in most cases.

The next week (this morning), I decided to go back to a basic 50/50 mix.  The results were much better:

Sediment Filters and Old Plumbing

I have a well update.  When I noted previously that I had sediment that was coming through despite a (nominal) one micron filter, I was wondering if I'd need to get even stronger filtration or a multistage filter system.  I started researching them online.

I think I just wasn't running the water enough after changing the filter.  I swapped out a couple of filters and finally let it run for a while as Benjamin Sahlstrom suggests.  The water may be a bit fouled at first after changing the filter, but it soon clears.  It seems that all is well, although there is definitely sediment getting through:

The red in the picture above is fine silt, which settles to the bottom of the toilet tank (several months' worth).  I have tested my filtered water and found that I have about 13 ppm of silica.  That's definitely higher than most public water systems would have, but not all--see, for example, the water quality report for Lenexa, KS: 10 ppm silica, range 2-17 ppm; recommended federal level 50 ppm or lower.  The main problem is that the silica will probably cause components in the dishwasher and washing machine to wear faster, and to some degree it may accumulate in the water heater--though the latter can be flushed.

Over time, the sediment does add up.  Below is what an Aquaboon one-micron wound string filter looked like after about 4 months (with a new one for comparison).

It looks worse than it actually is.  I was wondering if I had lost water pressure and so changed it; the new filter showed that it hadn't significantly impeded flow yet, even though it looked completely silted up when it was in the housing.  There was a fair amount of sediment in the bottom of the housing, but that doesn't really matter.

Even after the well was refurbished, water coming out of one of the outdoor taps--i.e., unfiltered--was dirty-looking. Much of that may have been attributable to some of the supply fixtures--galvanized steel and, for two outdoor hydrants, cast iron:

All of that is now replaced (with new galvanized in the case of the hydrants), and the water is looking much better.  There's still some cloudiness, but it is unfiltered, after all...

More on the Storage Life of Dehydrated Refried Beans

I noted a couple of years ago that I had some cans of dehydrated refried beans that were put up in February, 2009.  I am down to just one can left, but recently opened the next to last one.  It was fine.  If there has been any deterioration in quality, I can't detect it.  As I mentioned before and elsewhere, my house routinely hits 80 and higher in the summer (though usually not warmer than 83), so the storage conditions have definitely not been completely ideal.  Even so, they were okay.  Since I'm now about out, it's time for more.

The same things I noted previously still apply: they're a bit saltier than some brands of ready-to-use refried beans; also, I don't follow the process on the label above (1 1/2 cups of dry flakes with 1 cup of boiling water, stir and let sit for 10 minutes).  I make up smaller quantities for the microwave using an ad hoc amount of water, so I get inconsistent results.  Maybe the label directions would work better.  That notwithstanding, if they are a little too thin, letting them stand for a few minutes does thicken them up.  Continuing to heat them in a microwave does, too, but they start to crackle as they get heated further.

I generally use them for burritos, but even in a bowl eaten straight up they're fine.

Solid Surface Countertops

A few years ago I was doing some remodeling.  One of the things that needed replacing was the countertops.  The existing kitchen cabinets were taken out, and the base cabinet configuration was changing--even if it hadn't changed, the existing laminate counters were not in optimal shape.

The house I was living in at the time had plain white laminate counters in the kitchen, which actually worked pretty well.  In almost 20 years of use, they had very few scratches or other signs of wear.  However, I decided to go with a solid surface for the new ones.

Various places compare the myriad countertop options (marble, granite, engineered quartz, laminate, solid surface, concrete, tile, etc).  It looked like the solid surface ones would work well.  They're vulnerable to scratching--see below--but can also be repaired through sanding/buffing if there's an obvious scratch or other problem.  And they are a lot less heavy than granite or any other similar material.  They also aren't all that costly, although they can be depending on the design and where/when they are bought. Corian, Lotte (Staron), and LG (Hi-Macs) are three types.  Big-box stores like Lowes and Home Depot carry one or more of them, and they have periodic sales.

Scratches.  Solid surface countertops do scratch.  They're more susceptible to scratching than granite/quartz or laminate.  Mine, after a few months of use, do have scratches that are visible--but you have to look for them.

One thing I saw repeated frequently was the admonition to go with a lighter color, because scratches wouldn't show up as readily as with darker surfaces.  Some warned that darker colors would show lighter scratches and look bad in short order.  Some offer glossy finishes instead of matte.  These would also be more susceptible to revealing any scratching.  So, I ordered a bunch of 2"x2" samples and scratched them with a box cutter blade.  Scratches were easier to see in darker shades, so I went with a relatively light color (with some disappointment; some of the darker ones were very nice).

Below is a black countertop in an office building restroom--it was installed more than 10 years ago.  Scratches are evident, but it doesn't look too bad despite heavy daily traffic.

I think this is the Corian color Deep Anthracite; the Corian Web page notes, " May require additional maintenance."

Below is a closeup of my counter: LG Moon Haze.  The scratches--what ones there are--can't really be captured on camera at this point.

I have cool fluorescent-like LED lights in the kitchen; the surface looks less yellow than it does on the LG site--it's more off-white with crystals.  I like it (which is fortunate, because I'm stuck with it now).

Several months in, there are no evident problems with the installation. The picture above shows that the backsplash was not integral with the horizontal surface itself: it's just a separate piece that was caulked to the wall.  That was substantially less costly than doing a single casting.  Also, the edge is the basic one; additional options are available but they all cost more.  What I have looks fine to me.

Another Weed Flower

I've written about blooming weeds before, such as jewel weed.  Blackberry can be considered a weed, too; it is in bloom in late April / early May in north Georgia; it spreads aggressively; it also sometimes yields good fruit.

Another weed that both blooms and has the potential to spread is thistle.  There are a lot of varieties, and I'm not sure which one is in my back yard.  I have a couple of plants back there that seem to recur, although I cut them before they set seed.  Most thistles are annual or biennial, so I'm not sure why this happens every spring in the same place. One that is at least somewhat perennial and can spread by roots is Canadian thistle.

That notwithstanding, the blooms are large, pretty, and have a nice fragrance.  If they set seed, though, watch out. one plant can produce tens of thousands of seeds per year.

There are open fields not too far away that are heavily-infested and unattended, so they're getting worse with every passing year.

Here's another view of the plant that shows its form better; Canadian thistles have smooth upper stems, so that checks.   In the background of both shots you can see another non-native invasive that is truly worthless, privet.  I have a lot of it around and I'm going to try to cut a lot of it back this year.  While it does bloom, I don't really like those flowers at all.  Bizarrely, privet is still sold in nurseries...

Shown below is a stand of thistle near an Interstate on ramp.  Although the display may be reasonably attractive in the photo, if it isn't mowed soon a million seeds will be produced within a couple of months (possibly quite literally a million--or more).

While one or two plants can be nice, I'm fortunate I don't have more of it.

Update: Okay, so maybe it's not a good idea to have even one or two.  About three weeks after the above pictures were taken, the first flower had turned to seed, although new blooms were still opening.  I didn't get to it and bag it before some seeds escaped...but not many.  Alas.